Tag: twitter

After 20+ years of being “online” and connected to the rest of the world 24/7 I think that I have grown tired of the mighty internet. Partly my mind started wandering down this path because of the impending end of unlimited internet by my mobile phone provider. Most of my internet life is done through a mobile gadget. Some of this road was traveled because I saw one too many posts about the Kardashians. Still another section of this road was taken because Jesus, or some other crusade, dominates the highway. Some of the road was taken because there is always something broken, something new, or something invading my privacy.

I simply needed to face the fact I am a friggin junkie and move on with life.

Over the last few days I’ve come to realize that I will never be able to walk away from email or text messaging. These toys are deeply ingrained into my life, especially my working life. I can’t practically do away with them.

Mindless web surfing, though, serves no real purpose other than killing time. Most of the social networking stuff does nothing productive either. I have a tough time justifying the time spent on these activities.

Rather than frittering away my life and viewing the world through a screen I have decided to take drastic action.

I decided that if it doesn’t come to my email box then I probably don’t need to see it.

The hallowed phone is now as dumb as I can make it without opening it up and cutting wires. The battery saver is set to maximum, which cuts data connections when they aren’t used after a few minutes. Data is only sent and received when I am on wifi. The phone company’s data plan is not used. Pushes, fetches, and syncs are all set at the longest possible times rather than the shortest. Syncing with the Google servers is disabled. Background data is disabled. All the privacy settings are set to max. Any app that automagically connects to the internet has been removed. My web browser will not download images, cookies, or javascripts.

In short the phone is for phone calls and texting.

Even though, knowing me like I do, I will be back online in full force after I am done being grumpy email is the online only thing fully working.

I had the wild hair the other day of doing Twitter by SMS. This is the way Twitter was originally designed to work. I followed about 15 people, mostly local news and weather sources. This even proved to be too much noise. After about a day I turned it off too.

Quiet is a precious gift. It is generally free. It calms the nerves and relaxes the mind and body. We have become so accustomed to noise and the information bombardment that we can’t imagine life any differently.

After three or four days of being “off the grid” I do believe that I will begin using and being quiet more.